Lifestyle

Canberra nights out like any other

The Canberra Times is running a story about what goes on in Civic at night, after the various recent events. (I thought the story could have been half as long again and much better written but I forgive the man seeing as he’d been up til 4am before writing it).

They introduced the story with a Daily Tele style massive front page teaser, which read “We’re rude and violent”, which I took some offense at. Speak for yourself, CT sub, I personally am not intentionally violent and mostly only rude when tired.

Anyway, the upshot of Markus Mannheim’s “investigation” was that Canberra’s pretty much like anywhere else where people go out at night: there’s some unsavoury behaviour — drinking to excess, peeing in the street, the odd spot of drink spiking, yelling at girls to “show us yer tits” and so on — but people don’t really mind and certainly don’t let it stop them from having fun. Indeed, despite the various happenings, the police and taxi drivers told Mr Mannheim that last Friday night was “quiet and uneventful”, suggesting that all this is just normal behaviour for nights on the town.

The only part of the story that had me any kind of worried was when he talked to “Kylie, 19, of Narrabundah” and “her friend Jade, 17, of Jerrabomberra.” 17? What’s she planning on doing in the middle of the night in Civic?

Slow news day/week/month or what? It’s not news to anyone that lives in Canberra that Civic is full of drunk people on a Friday and Saturday night. I think it’s our god given right as Australians and Canberrans to be able to do this. In fact, I think as Australians we are obliged to spend a big night out on the town every so often.

National obligations aside, drunk people get noisy, violent, messy and horny; it’s what been happening for millenia and will continue to do so.

I’d like to take a wager, however, that if I went out to interview a bunch of drunkards, a little bit of charm and social skill would allow me to title a similar story “We’re drunk, but damn good fun!”

but but glimmertwin, didn’t you see their self-congratualtions on Saturday? No? Well let me quote it in all its glory for you:

Readership on the rise

The Canberra Times was again among the nation’s newspapers to show greatest readership growth in the 12 months to June 30.

The independent Roy Morgan survey, which is used throughout the newspaper and advertising industries, reported that readership of The Canberra Times Monday-Friday grew by 8.4 per cent to an average of 129,000 a day. The Saturday edition of the Canberra Times grew by 9.2 per cent to 190,000 readers. Amng metropolitan newspapers, this was second only to Sydney’s Daily Telegraph, which grew by 9.7 per cent. It was by far the biggest growth of any of the broadsheets.

The Sunday Times also grew by 7000 readers to 112,000, which in percentage growth was the biggest of all Australia’s majoy Sundays.

The general managers of The Canberra Times, lloyd Whish-Wilson, said the growth continued the trends of the past two years.

It was once again demonstrated the newspaper’s penetration of the Canberra market was unmatched by any other media.

The editor of the Canberra Times, Michael Stevens, said the introduction of new features and improvements would continue with a new weekly junior sport section, Personal Best, beng published each Tuesday from next week. Also from next week the popular Food and Wine section would be published as a stitced and trimmed magazine every Wednesday.

As well, The Canberra TImes would continue to publish regular features focused on Canberra life, such as the daily Then and Now series which started in today’s edition.

The series draws largely on The CAnberra Times’ library of historic photographs to compare how the nation’s capital and surrounds once were and how they look today.

Mr Stevens said The Canberra Times strived to publish cotnent that was relevant to and reflective of the people living in the Canberra region.

I’l reserve judgement on the various changes, but it is worth noting that papers (and magazines) quote either of two figures when it conveniences them: readership and circulation. Circulation being the actual number of papers sold and readership being an approximation of how many people come into contact with each of these papers (I believe often judged at 4 or 5 people per paper).